From Marriage to the Market: The Transformation of Women’s Lives and Work
by Susan Thistle
Chapter 2: Support for Women’s Domestic Economy in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries
This reading examines the differences between white women’s and African American women’s work in the United States during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is clear that both groups of women were responsible for certain tasks around the house but the situations that each group of women found themselves in differed especially with the changing of the economy. Both groups of women were expected to rear the children as well as take care of the household but over time the gender division of labor changed especially when women joined the workforce and started to get paid for work outside of the home.
In the 19th century, white women “tended gardens and poultry, prepared meals, made and mended clothes, hauled water, stoked fires, and gave birth to, in 1800, an average of seven infants, raising roughly five to adulthood.” (p. 19) But as the economy started to change and there was a need for women to work in certain jobs such as the textile mills. Women also began to produce excess dairy products in order to sell them which fostered the creation of dairy maids, but as that seemed to be a potentially lucrative job men took over because “men kept control of any work that had the potential to make money.” Women were even seen as a necessity to take care of a husband and around the house and many men were encouraged to marry for this purpose. “Unmarried workers sharing living quarters often pooled their wages to keep one woman at home.” (p. 24) It was so important to these men that there was even a Supreme Court ruling that declared, “the need to protect women “from the greed as well as the passion of men,” [which] rules in favor of limiting women’s hours.” (p. 25)
African American women on the other hand had to endure much more. Especially during the times of slavery, many women had to endure a lot to rear their children and take care of their family and also endure the long hours that came along with being a slave. Unlike white women, however, “their long hours of work did not bring black women themselves increased wealth, but only greater hardship.” (p. 23) Also, during the 20th century, when African American women started to enter the workforce, their wages were significantly less than those of their male counterparts and “the majority of black wives were not employed.” (p. 30)
The gender division of labor is a product of the society that the individuals are a part of and clearly, in the 19th and 20th centuries the tasks that women were responsible for around the house were very important to the people in the United States. But where did it change really? Nowadays, women are expected to work outside of the house as well as inside of the house and the amount of work that a woman has to do can sometimes greatly outweigh that of her male counterpart. Childrearing and taking care of a household are not paid work but are still work and many women who also do have families experience what sociologist Arlie Hochschild calls “the Second Shift” where women come home to a household and are expected to complete the tasks that women who did not do paid work used to do.
Chapter 3: The Breakdown of Women’s Domestic Economy after World War II
After World War II, there had been an increase in industrialization, which led to the mass production of certain products that made household work easier for women. These things such as washing machines refrigerators, and running water made it easier to complete the tasks that women would have to do themselves or by hand which thus saved time for the women in the post World War II era. Also many women (especially older women) that needed additional income because their husbands could not find work or to match a lifestyle that demanded more money led more women to enter the workforce and get paid work instead of just working in the home. Sociologist Joann Vanek saw a big difference between the work of unemployed and employed women; employed women reduced the amount of time that they spent doing household work but unemployed women managed to spend a large amount of time on household tasks which according to Vanek was due to these unemployed women “‘just’ keeping busy.” (p. 41)
Many women found it hard to balance both a home life as well as having a job. Many women, thus, chose to put their work on the backburner by choosing jobs close to home or by just being less involved in paid work if the family needs were high due to children. Not only this, but it was hard challenging the old ideas of the woman needs to stay home and be the homemaker while her husband is out of the house being the breadwinner.
Groups even started to come about that helped women challenge these roles and find jobs outside of the home. For example, the National Council of Negro Women and the National Organization for Women helped many to find jobs in an attempt to gain equality with their male counterparts. Many men even were opposed to the traditional roles of marriage. “By the mid-1970s, 60 percent of men saw marriage as restrictive.” (p. 47) Many men saw the traditional role of taking care of his wife for her whole life as being negative. And “the lessened economic necessity of marriage opened up a new possibility… By the mid-1960s, “love” had become one of the most important issues for male college students in choosing a wife.” (p. 47)
Even many college students started to form sexual relationships prior to marriage due to the sexual revolution. The creation of contraceptives and the changing of roles and focus of having emotional connection behind a relationship led to this change. Women and men were not in a relationship for the economic benefit but rather in it for more emotional reasons.
Even certain laws that stopped many married women such as the “marriage bar” were abolished and certain laws such as the Equal Pay Act of 1963 were passed which helped women to gain some equality in the workplace (at least according to the law). Also, “In 1974, in Cleveland Board of Education v. La Fleur, the Supreme Court decided in favor of expectant mothers’ right to continue to work and collect pay.” (p. 53)
The changing of the economy really had an impact on how relationships were formed. It is interesting that something like the changing of roles in terms of paid work amongst the genders really affected how people acted towards one another. The ways that people functioned in society prior to this time was a woman was expected to work in the house and take care of the children where men were expected to work outside of the home to help financially support that same family. But the changing of women’s roles really helped to form the society that we live in today. Everything that our generation knows about relationships is a product of this change that has helped to form the people we are today. In my opinion, I think that it is better this way, marriage is no longer a binding contract and though divorce rates are higher than ever, for those relationships that do last and work well, it makes it more meaningful. In addition to this, I think that more legislation is needed to ensure that women receive equal pay. President Barack Obama passed the Lilly Ledbetter Act to supplement the Equal Pay Act of 1963, but still women do not receive the same pay for the same job. It may be a matter of a change in employers and the system, rather than passing more laws that cannot be enforced well.
Feminism, Children and the New Families
By Dornbusch and Strober
Wives and Work: A Theory of the Sex-Role Revolution and Its Consequences
Clearly over time, the dynamics between men and women surrounding work have changed. In “1890, only some 4.6% of wives were in the labor force… by 1985 it was well over half – 54.2%.” (p. 67) Something has clearly happened to change and the authors have broken it down to the breakdown of the breadwinner model or “traditional” roles played by men and women where the male is the breadwinner and the female is the homemaker.
Something interesting that popped out to me was, “we find that the wives most committed to the labor market are those in the prime reproductive stage.” (p. 69) This shows that the balance between work outside of the home and childrearing is no longer of concern and that does not stop women from entering into the workforce. This change is due to a number of factors.
People have always worked close to home. Women used to be hunters and gatherers and worked very close to the home because of having to take care of children all while men were out hunting, but the home became the “home base for food sharing and subsistence activities.” (p. 72) But more recently, the breadwinner system is collapsing. According to the reading, “The breadwinner system, by making domestic duties full-time occupation of the wife, was ideally suited to producing many children.” (p. 77) But “because of longer life and because of earlier termination of childbearing, a bride can expect to live about 33 years after her last child has left home. This means that many women have much more time than to just rear children, thus more are entering the workforce because there is now much more time to be lived past raising children due to the extension of the life expectancy.
One quote really sparked my interest was “As long as husband and wife are unequal in the labor market, they will be unequal at home; on the average, the one who contributes less in the labor market is expected to contribute more at home.” (p. 83) I think this is quite the statement because many women nowadays work the same jobs but overall there is still inequality in pay. That being said, many women then return home to work on domestic chores, many of which men do not complete. That being said, there is more work hours put in both at home and a comparable amount outside of the home that leaves the relationship unfavorable for the women. According to exchange theory, a relationship is only beneficial if the rewards greatly outweigh the costs of the relationship, so can this really be true? Many relationships are successful, yet they are not equal in terms of work outside of the home and inside as well.
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